


Shoulda Used a Password

by AParticularlyLargeBear



Series: Shadowrun College [2]
Category: Shadowrun
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-29
Updated: 2015-09-29
Packaged: 2018-04-24 01:15:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,115
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4899919
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AParticularlyLargeBear/pseuds/AParticularlyLargeBear
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gobbet struggles with The Essay of Doom, and searching for a way of procrastinating, happens upon some personal property.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Shoulda Used a Password

Each time Gobbet hit a key on the computer, it was like the death knell of _fun._ She wanted, desperately, to be anywhere other than the library. Her room. Cafeteria. Class. Gym. …Actually maybe not the gym.

 _Almost_ anywhere other than the library.

Alas, she approached the dreaded Deadline for this latest assignment, and having procrastinated in every meaningful (and a few non-meaningful) way, she had at last been forced to admit defeat and actually just write the damn thing. To add insult to injury, Is0bel had kicked her out of their dorm room, pointing out that she’d been saying ‘one more episode’ of that TV series for the past four hours. Stupid responsible roommate, taking away her Netflix…

‘As you can see, the artist-‘ Backspace backspace backspace.

‘This piece represents-‘ Backspace backspace backspace.

‘Gobbet Gobbleton Esq. (1978), stated that-‘ Backspace.

Gobbet glared at the screen, demanding it divulge the secret to perfecting this essay.

It refused.

She sighed.

“Guess we’re doing this the hard way…”

Over the next hour and a half, Gobbet steadily sank lower and lower in her chair until she was almost horizontal, hands reaching feebly upwards to her keyboard, lethargically typing out sentences that she was praying made some kind of sense. She longed for the respite of the dorm room, curled up in a nest of blankets with a pot noodle. Two pot noodles.

But… if she didn’t finish this tonight, she would have to keep working on it tomorrow, and tomorrow was sacred Friday night, and that one place in town did that amazing two for one deal on those drizzled kebabs and… and her mouth was watering. Dammit.

With an exasperated grunt, Gobbet levered herself back into some semblance of a normal seated position. She should probably proofread all this at least once.

She was met with two paragraphs of solid, if uninspired analysis, and the remainder of a page filled with abject gibberish. Not even figurative gibberish. Actual gibberish that didn’t even resemble words. Her mouth moved soundlessly as she tried to work out what exactly had happened there. Then she looked down at her keyboard. Back up to the screen, down to the keyboard again.

“Oh. For fuck’s sake.”

 Her hands had been one key over from where they were supposed to be. This was what she got for not looking at what she was typing.

“Fuuuuuuuuuuuck,” Gobbet opined, kicking her chair back from the desk.

Grumbling quietly under her breath, Gobbet made the executive decision that she had earned a break, and started looking around the library to see who else was home. It quickly became clear, however, that the entire room was depressingly deserted. Dammit, there went that distraction. She could have sworn that the place was full when she showed up to start working. Really, that was just inconsiderate, wasn’t it? Selfish other people, not sticking around for her to spy on.

“Urrrrrrgh,” Gobbet groaned, allowing her head to flop bonelessly onto her shoulder.

She paused. There, sticking out of the machine next to hers, was a plain black USB pen.

“Hmn…” Gobbet thought about it for but an instant, then immediately whisked the pen drive from the machine and plugged it into her own computer. Just to see if there was anything on it to identify whom it belonged to, of course.

Yeeeep.

The flash drive popped up on her screen and Gobbet double clicked in a trice, opening it up. She was immediately presented with an array of suspiciously well organised folders. ‘PROJECT’ read one. ‘SCHEMATICS’ another. A third was ‘COURSEWORK’ and a fourth ‘INSPIRATION’.

There were others, too, but Gobbet immediately zeroed in on that last one. Porn? That definitely sounded like porn.

“Okay, buddy, what kinda weird shit are you into…” Gobbet muttered to herself, all thoughts of actual investigation overridden by devilish curiosity.

Gobbet opened the folder, and was presented with a series of thumbnails, too small to make anything out properly. They were all labelled with- well, at first Gobbet thought they were body parts, considering there were ‘arms’, ‘legs’, ‘feet’ in there, but then she spotted ‘chassis’ and ‘talons’, which admittedly were still parts, but not quite the same. Gobbet wasn’t sure if those labels sounded more or less weirdly fetishistic.

In for a penny in for a pound. Gobbet clicked the first ‘arms’ thumbnail, and was treated to… a nature image. Of a lobster.

Gobbet blinked.

Uh…huh.

She started clicking through, finding an array of animal pictures. Now normally she wouldn’t raise too much of an eyebrow at this type of thing; she had a whole folder on her laptop dedicated to rats, but this was just… strange. The pictures seemed to have a very scientific structure, plain and clear, not about the animal in its environment, but the animal itself. Several of them had been annotated with symbols and numbers, and a least a couple were actual anatomy charts. The ‘chassis’ pictures were even odder; bugs and beetles and crustaceans. What the heck _was_ this labelling system?

Gobbet closed an image, shook her head. Well that had… that had certainly worked as a distraction. A very confusing distraction. However, just as she was about to back out of the folder, one more file caught Gobbet’s eye. This one was ‘Special Inspiration’, and was, from what she could see, the only _video_ in the folder. She hummed softly to herself, then shrugged, and opened it.

“Excuse me?”

Gobbet just about jumped out of her skin at the softly Russian-accented voice that came from behind her.

“Guh!”

The newcomer recoiled a step. He was a strange looking guy – probably a senior, hair dark but prematurely greying, wearing a long coat that seemed entirely inappropriate for the weather AND the location.

“Sorry. I merely wished to inquire as to whether you’d seen my pen drive. I left it-“

There was a loud, plaintive meow from over Gobbet’s shoulder. She froze.

Another meow, a veritable chorus of cats. A look of pure consternation crossed the guy's face.

“Ahem. It appears you have found it. Can you please return my property?”

Gobbet slowly looked back to the screen.

Yep.

That was a kitten video.

Gobbet cracked a goofy smile, pulled out the pen drive – longcoat winced.

“You should really wait to disconnect it properly.”

“Oh. Right. Uh. Sorry.”

He held out his hand. Gobbet deposited the USB in it.

“Thank you, Miss…?”

Gobbet smirked. “It’s Gobbet.”

He frowned, as if trying to determine whether she was making a joke at him, then nodded. “…Racter.”

She gave an airy wave, and he turned away and left.

Gobbet flexed her hands, wriggled her fingers. All right, essay. Round two.


End file.
